This is US band Dawnbringer’s seventh album. They play Heavy Metal.
Night of the Hammer has a strong 70’s vibe and mixes Heavy Metal with a good dose of ancient Doom to create something that’s drenched in the past yet remains potent today.
The brittle-sounding production lends the proceedings a proto-Blackened aura and enhances the feelings of authenticity and sheer audiophile-esque pleasure that this record gives off.
The important thing about a band like this is the quality of the songwriting and Dawnbringer are not found wanting in this regard. These are simple songs that are all the more powerful and effective for it.
Each track is stripped-back Heavy Metal as raw and emotive as when the genre was born. The rocking riffs and solid drums breathe life into the songs. The bass provides a firm bedrock for the band to build on and the solos and leads add colour. The odd Black Metal influence raises its head, mainly on Not Your Right, and strangely only sounds a little out of place.
The band play upbeat, downbeat and all kinds of mid-paced riffs in-between. The songs have plenty of darker moments but Dawnbringer are not afraid to sound chirpier on occasion also. True, it never reaches Power Metal levels of happiness or Folk’s sometime’s jauntiness, but they can certainly sound brighter than a lot of Metal when the need arises. Xiphias is a great example of this.
The music and exceptional vocals definitely have a 70’s vibe but the album also transcends this to have a certain timeless quality about it.
This is a most enjoyable album when you want a Classic Metal sound that harkens back to the time when Metal was born.
Northern Crown’s début EP In the Hands of the Betrayer is a thoroughly enjoyable slab of Metal that any Doom/Heavy Metal fan should rightfully have in their collection. I wanted to find out more so I quizzed multi-instrumentalist Zach…
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
Hey there! So we are Northern Crown from the US. We’re based between South Florida and Nashville, TN. We play what we like to call “Epic Doom Metal”.
Give us a bit of history to Northern Crown
I formed Northern Crown in January of 2013…it had a different vibe initially. It was more of a jammy stoner/sludge vibe. It was a 3 piece with me on vocals. That lineup didn’t really work out and as I was writing this album, the sound really transformed. As I began recording the album, I was put in touch with Frank and Josh through a mutual friend. Randy, Sally and Roberto are all friends of mine. The lineup for this record end up coming together really quickly.
What are your influences?
Classic heavy metal, classic doom metal, 70’s rock. Specifically, Black Sabbath, Dio, Candlemass, Rainbow, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple. Really, anything epic and heavy.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
I’ve got a few things…I’ve been in a bit of a 90’s mode, so I’ve been listening to Edge of Sanity Crimson on endless repeat. It’s a great album…and if you’ve never heard it, you’re missing out.
I’m also big into the hard rock/proto metal stuff that’s coming out of Sweden like Witchcraft, Graveyard and Horisont.
What did you want to achieve with your new release?
Fame and fortune? Barring that, get our name out to the metal public and build some momentum for our next release and hopefully some live performances.
Tell us the meaning behind the title.
Without getting SUPER specific, the title “In the Hands of the Betrayer” is about me putting a great trust and responsibility in another person and they failed in the worst way possible.
Are you happy with how it turned out?
As someone who drives themselves really hard, I’m never totally happy with anything I do, but I’m really proud of this record and everybody that was involved.
What can you tell us about the lyrics?
The lyrics are all pretty personal…and I won’t get into specifics as I want people to take their own meaning from the songs…but each original track on the record tells the story of 3 particularly bad, life altering days in my life. Dramatic? Yes…but also cathartic.
Give us a bit of information on the songwriting process.
This album was written by me and the songs were basically finished before anybody else got involved. Frank wrote all the vocal melodies. My hope is to be more collaborative on the next release.
Tell us about the cover song on In The Hands of the Betrayer – why this band and why this song?
Firstly, I love Candlemass and they’re obviously the single biggest influence on this band. Epicus Doomicus Metallicus is one of my all-time favourites and Crystal Ball is such a heavy, powerful and groovy song.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
We’re a traditional Heavy Metal and Doom Metal band…and I want to continue to explore that sound while keeping it modern. I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface yet in what we can do with arrangements, whether it be vocals, organ or guitars.
What does the future hold for Northern Crown?
The near future is going to be spent promoting the début. I’ve already done some initial writing. Hopefully next year we get out and play some gigs and release a follow up to the EP later in 2015.
Our début EP, “In the Hands of the Betrayer” is out on October 14! You can find us online @ http://doommet.al
Kattah are a Power Metal band from Brazil and this is their second album.
This is Power/Heavy Metal with varied and exotic world influences and an Iron Maiden flavour. Mix in a bit of Kamelot and Queensrÿche and you have a good idea of the area Kattah inhabit.
The singer does his best Bruce Dickinson/Geoff Tate impression and for the most part pulls it off admirably. It allows him to have an instantly recognisable charisma without sounding like a clone.
Kattah have an ear for a good chorus, with plenty of the songs having decent hooks and catchy melodies. The band obviously have well-developed songwriting skills and they put these to good use.
The songs are able demonstrations of the Power Metal style with the Heavy Metal influence reining in the more extravagant tendencies that Power Metal seems to have. The songs are not devoid of ostentation, however, and the musicians are definitely a capable lot.
There are lots of good riffs and more than enough leads and solos to appeal. I’m very partial to some good shredding and this album features enough to satiate.
Another strength of this release is that it’s certainly no one-dimensional affair; it may stick within the Heavy/Power Metal template but it’s a much more varied release than most offerings from similar bands.
At 56 minutes in length there is a lot of material here and the band obviously have both ambition and talent. Given the right exposure Kattah have the potential to make quite a mark on the Metal scene, as they have both extravagance and accessibility in their favour.
Overall it’s a good collection of songs and Lapis Lazuli is a strong album.
Execration’s latest album Morbid Dimensions is an impressive, multi-faceted beast. After I’d picked myself back up off the floor, I scribbled down some hastily-scribed queries onto broken parchment and launched them into the ether. Somehow, somewhere, Cato Syversrud responded…
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
We’re four people from in and around Oslo, Norway playing metal of death. We focus on atmosphere and feeling over technical wankery, and share more in common with the bands of the eighties than most modern death metal bands. Still, we’re no retro-act, and we keep trying to take our music new places.
Give us a bit of history to Execration
Execration took its first steps in 2004. By 2006, we’d recorded our first EP, Language of the Dead. Immediately after that, Jonas joined on bass completing the band. After Jonas joined, we quickly wrote songs for our first album, Syndicate of Lethargy, which came out in 2008, over a year after it was recorded. In 2010 we did a split with fellow Oslo-area bands Lobotomized, Diskord, and Obliteration, called “Oslo We Rot”. In 2011, we released our celebrated second album, Odes of the Occult, and now we’re on the verge of releasing our latest album, Morbid Dimensions.
What are your influences?
Musically, I think we cover a lot of ground, as the four of us have our own tastes. I mean, we all share lots of bands in common that we all love, but each of us also have influences that the others don’t share. We all prefer things that sound “real”, things that have an edge and some dynamics to it, and that hasn’t been produced to a brickwalled piece of plastic. This means that we do enjoy quite a bit of vintage metal, but there’s also lots of cool new things coming out. Except for the metal stuff, there are of course bands in other genres as well, and I guess our tastes are less unified in this manner. Aside from other bands, we also find our influences in movies, and even to some degree other forms of art. These can inspire certain kinds of moods and atmospheres that we will try to incorporate into our music.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
In the close future we will be sharing stage with Swedish Nifelheim at the Krater festival here in Oslo, so I’ve been playing their “Envoy of Lucifer” a lot recently. It’s really good stuff. Diskord’s newest EP has also gotten heavy rotation on all of our headsets, and I (Chris) have also spent some time with the latest Mastodon album. It’s not as great as they used to be, but it sure beat the previous one. Other than that bands like Bölzer, Twink, Circus 2000, Damian, Thorne, Old Razor, Sarcofago have been spinning a lot lately
What did you want to achieve with your new album?
We wanted the album to stand out in its own right, and to have an identity distinct from our other albums. This was a clear goal right from the beginning when we started writing the album, and to be honest, I think we’ve been pretty successful at this. We didn’t have in mind exactly how we would set this one apart, but we did have some ideas for moods and aspects of our music we felt we hadn’t explored fully on previous releases. As always, we also wanted the album to have a solid atmosphere, and not just be a riff-heavy metal album. On songs like Tribulation Shackles, this aspect has really been allowed to sit front and center, and on other tracks, it’s more subdued, integrated into otherwise intense and hectic songs.
Are you happy with how it turned out?
Quite so. Writing is a creative process, and the process itself has taken us places we couldn’t foresee upfront. It’s always exciting to be able to sit down and review the final product once it’s all over, and this time was no different. We’ve achieved our main goals, which was evolving our sound and evoking a deadly atmosphere.
What can you tell us about the lyrics?
We like to keep the lyrics on the obscure side. I will simply point you to the album title, the cover art and the overall feeling of the album, and let you make up the meaning of the songs for yourself.
Give us a bit of information on the songwriting process.
We always write as a group. Typically, people will show up at rehearsal with a riff or two, or maybe even a series of riffs stringed into a part. We will then work on what we have, and start looking to combine riffs into parts. In the early phases, we will even occasionally switch instruments when someone has an idea for something, and work like that to hash it out. Eventually these parts clump up into songs, and eventually the creativity shifts gears from writing new material to moulding the raw songs into more refined arrangements. This will include rearranging things, working with tempos and shifts, and the little details that separate OK songs from really great songs.
You have a very diverse and accomplished sound – how did you decide what you wanted to sound like in each part of the different songs?
We tend to think in songs more than in individual parts. So the individual parts exist to support the overall dynamics of the song. I don’t think there’s so much consideration of how we want to sound in this part and that part, it’s more how do we create good dynamics throughout the song. This plays into all the aspects of a song/part: tempo, keynote, mood, and so on.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
Well, that’s for the future to tell. All we know is that the next set of songs won’t sound like missing out-takes from Morbid Dimensions – that’s the drive of Execration, creating something new. On the new album, we made some drastic changes to the guitar sound by using a completely different tuning than the previous album. This may not be a permanent change. We’ll see where life takes us.
What’s next for Execration?
The album is about to come out, so first up is playing a few gigs to support them. Next year we hope to make it to more places further away. We also plan to write new material shortly, but what will come of it is impossible to say at this point. Rest assured, you have not heard the last of Execration.
Orange Goblin are from the UK and this is their eighth album. They play Stoner/Heavy Metal.
At this point Orange Goblin are pretty much a UK institution in their own right and their storming new album will once again seal their status as one of the best this country has to offer. When you want good, honest, balls-to-the-wall Heavy Metal with swagger, groove and attitude; accept no substitutes.
Mammoth riffs and thick grooves are once again tirelessly thrown out by the band with reckless abandon, heedless of the hordes of lesser bands that they show up by simply existing.
Orange Goblin have always excelled at writing just good, old-fashioned songs. The type of songs you can either sit back and enjoy or actively get involved with. They’re as catchy as bag of hooks.
The shocking thing is that pretty much every song here is a stand-out track. Although the taster songs are The Devil’s Whip and Sabbath Hex, they could almost have picked any song at random and had it be a single.
That’s not to say they all sound the same, however. If anything, the band have introduced more variety onto this album and it makes for a very complete sounding collection of songs. From the shorter, more upbeat songs to the longer blues-infused pseudo-jams, to Classic Metal-infused anthems and everything in between; Back From The Abyss hits the spot.
The album is backed up by a warm, gritty recording that pulses with vitality and life. The guitars sound huge, the drums are deeply satisfying and the singer’s voice is on top form.
Orange Goblin have always released top quality albums and Back From the Abyss is one of their best. Be sure to check it out.
Northern Crown are from the US and this is their debut EP, although at 31 minutes in length it’s the same length as some albums.
The band play Heavy/Doom Metal in its original guise and with added organ accompaniment. Although the band play slow on occasion, this is more on the Heavy Metal side of things than Doom, although there’s a fair amount of crossover in the genres anyway.
Played well and with obvious enthusiasm; Northern Crown are a very likeable and personable band. Choruses ring out and juicy melodies are used. Guitars unleash sonic hell with evocative leads and molten solos. The rhythm guitars are nicely chunky and tasty, emotive riffs are the bedrock of the songs.
These tracks span varying speeds from the up-tempo to mid-paced to straight Doom Metal. All the while the organs add that extra layer to proceedings.
If you like the heavier works of Black Sabbath and Ronnie James Dio then Northern Crown should be right up your street. The inclusion of a Candlemass cover should seal the deal and rounds out the influences.
This is Metal through and through and a very promising start to what will hopefully be a long and productive career.
This is the second album from Australia’s A Breach of Silence.
The band play modern Melodic Metalcore. We’ve met this band before with their début album Dead or Alive which was a passionate display of the more commercial side of Metal. So what does the new offering sound like?
Stylistically we’re in similar territory to the first, although everything appears to be cranked up even higher this time.
The harsh vocals are harsher, the clean singing bigger, the heavy parts heavier, the melodic parts more so…you get the idea.
Importantly though, the band have improved their songwriting. Their début was perfectly enjoyable of course, but this album is just better. With the benefit of hindsight it now seems as if Dead or Alive was almost a trial run for The Darkest Road. Whereas the first was the band finding their sound, this is them refining it and obviously benefiting from touring and perfecting their formula.
The Power Metal influence has lessened somewhat, although it’s still a part of the band’s sound; this is most notable on songs like Immortal and Time Still Remains where it gets to shine brightly.
The recording is suitably huge, which is a necessity for a band like this. Everything sounds in your face and clear.
Well I’m suitably impressed by this. It won’t change the world but it is a very enjoyable slab of modern Metal. The band have improved on their sound and the songs are bigger and better than ever. Kudos to them.
If your tastes run to the more commercial then this is definitely a recommended listen.
Skull Koraptor are a Thrash Metal band from Greece and this is their début EP.
Skull Koraptor play Old-School Thrash Metal with a pinch of Heavy Metal added to the mix. They’re influenced by the old Big Four and wear their influences on their sleeves.
It’s energetic and played with passion. We may have heard this style many times before but there’s no denying the enthusiasm that the band attack the material with.
The instruments are played well and there are a fair few enjoyable solos sprinkled around.
Each song is well written and the band have a good grasp of what it takes to write a catchy Metal song.
The vocalist does a good job and overall this is an authentic recreation of Old-School Metal that should be recognisable to any fan of the genre.
If you’ve reached your saturation point with this type of Metal then there’s probably not much to tempt you here, however if you still carry a torch for this older Thrash sound then Skull Koraptor are actually way better and more authentic than a lot of those in the retro-Thrash movement.
Want some enjoyable and honest Old-School Thrash Metal? Look no further.
Onheil are from the Netherlands and this is their second album.
Storm is Coming has a strong production with everything sounding crushing and the band easily wreak devastation like a natural disaster, which is partially what the concept of the album is based upon.
Onheil play Black Metal that’s fast and sharp but also surprisingly heavy as they have a bit of a Blackened Thrash/Heavy Metal influence to their sound.
The band I’m reminded of most is Hypocrisy as Onheil have a similar feel to both their style and sound – if you take Hypocrisy circa Into the Abyss and give it a bit more of a Black Metal sheen then you’ll have the right idea.
They’re certainly not Hypocrisy rip-off’s though, as I’m also reminded of bands like Amon Amarth and, (to a lesser extent), Dimmu Borgir, Kreator and Iron Maiden in places.
The vocalist is very accomplished and sounds great whether he’s screaming or growling. Powerful cleans are also used sparingly to add effect and provide good back up to the main shrieks.
The Blackened melodies are played fast and hard, with riffs and leads being in no short supply. Storm is Coming also features an enjoyably Heavy Metal aspect to their sound, mainly in the guitar department. Duelling guitars are prominent and many leads could be straight out of the Classic Heavy Metal rulebook.
This is a band who can play Melodic Black Metal without it sounding jolly or hopeful; this is dark music with an evil tinge to it that all centres around the band’s direct and cutting method of assault.
Overall this is an enjoyable and absorbing listen with good songs and melodies that capture the attention. Check them out and see what you think.
Threshold are from the UK and play Progressive Metal. This is their 10th album.
The latest Threshold album, eh? Always a pleasure to listen to this band. They have put out some great music over the years so this was an album I was looking forward to listening to.
Although undeniably still Progressive Metal, they’ve added a little more Hard Rock in their sound, which shows up in some of the harder riffs they use from time to time. This is a subtle alteration however, as they’ve always had this aspect to their sound in varying amounts and For The Journey is still Threshold through-and-through.
Straight away the classic Threshold sound blares out of the speakers as soon as you press play. Threshold are remarkable in this style of music in that you can instantly recognise them; they don’t particularly sound like anyone else and yet even though it’s instantly familiar they still manage to avoid overtly repeating themselves. This speaks of a band with a lot of talent, which has always been apparent.
The songs on For The Journey are a well-crafted collection of strong tracks that showcase the considerable songwriting ability of the band. They walk the fine line between technical ability and emotive songwriting and manage to strike the perfect balance between the two.
Threshold have always, to me, sounded very easy listening in the sense that their music appears to effortlessly sink into the brain and it’s like listening to liquefied Metal that tastes as good as the finest of wines.
The musicianship is, of course, exemplary. Whether this is the powerfully understated drumming, the driving riffs, the exquisite solos and leads, the subtle bass or the mood enhancing keyboards; Threshold know what they’re doing and they do it extremely well.
Vocally as well, the band are onto a winner. A compelling and powerful voice provides clean vocals that are wide in range and incredibly self-assured and powerful. Some of the vocal melodies are enough to send shivers down the spine, especially when they merge perfectly with the accompanying music. The astoundingly good chorus to Unforgiven is one example of many.
Well, what an album. For their tenth full-length Threshold have once again created a masterpiece of Progressive Metal that raises the bar for any other band who are even vaguely playing this style.
This is essential listening from an exemplary band. Get this.
This is US band Dawnbringer’s seventh album. They play Heavy Metal.
What are your influences?
What can you tell us about the lyrics?
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
Wonderbox Metal 